


all the way to the bottom of the sea

by stellatiate



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Mentions of Character Death, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-28
Updated: 2014-02-28
Packaged: 2018-01-14 01:34:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1247791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellatiate/pseuds/stellatiate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>allison could only run for so much longer, but eventually, she had to crash, and it had to be somewhere with someone she trusts, with someone like them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all the way to the bottom of the sea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fandomdough](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fandomdough/gifts).



The ground trembles under her combat boots when she returns. Beacon Hills drips something ominous into her blood, something black and cloudy and thick that Allison hasn’t felt for years. And she hates this place, she swears, because it makes her feel as if she is returning home when she steps foot within the city limits, and simultaneously, she feels surrounded by headstones and old feelings buried deep and a graveyard of relics she never wanted to see again.

But she is here because _he_ asked her to come, such a simple text, just _come back_ , and she cannot say no to him.

It had been a full moon when she arrived in Beacon Hills, that very first night driving on the dark road, and it had been another full moon when she left, a memory that became a terror in the dark of her mind. It was nothing but a frantic escape, scooping up an armful of clothes and driving through teary eyes.

She just wanted to get away from everything, from everyone, but she isn’t sure whether to count her withered relationships a success anymore.

…

The first time she sees Lydia after almost seven years, she doesn’t recognize her, because what she sees is a goddess with slender legs and thick rimmed glasses and hair sliced around her shoulders. But there is no mistake in that calculated purse of her lips and the tilt of her head in arrogance, and Allison coughs primly into her shoulder.

Her eyes flicker behind the lenses of her glasses and she almost walks by, but then she clutches the back of her chair, twists the top half of her body around to look at her.

It seems almost out of place to be meeting her once best friend in a dingy little diner at the outskirts of town, but Allison hasn’t felt herself in place anywhere, not since the first time she left Beacon Hills.

“Allison?” And she looks _precisely_ the same, so the element of question in her voice is disbelief, it is the look of someone long lost, a mirage in plain sight.

Her lips twitch to one side and Allison tucks the long spirals of her hair behind her ear, showing off the shaved patch against her temple. It had been whimsical; it was tradition to cut one’s hair to signify a change, to start over, but Allison just wanted to destroy, wanted to raze herself to the ground and it was the only safe way that she could.

Lydia is stunning, and Allison is waiting to detonate, and she does not belong near this treasure of a girl.

“Long time no see,” she murmurs, scoots over in her seat as if to show she is comfortable, and Lydia notches her heels against the stool as she hoists herself into a seat beside her. The lady behind the counter eyes the two of them and retreats towards the back, and Lydia sits up straight, even in a chair with no back.

She reaches out first to touch Allison’s hair, to rub her fingers against the peach fuzz shaved into her scalp, and if her nails scrape over her cheek just to _touch_ her, she can’t really say she minds it, can’t say she isn’t leaning into it and hoping it is.

And then she yanks her hand away as if it is red-hot, as if Allison is burning her fingertips, and looks at her as if she is some distant thing, a specimen under a microscope. “Scott was hoping you’d come.” There is nothing personal about her tone and Allison hates that, how Lydia can shut herself on and off without the slightest inclination of difficulty.

“I’m not ready to see him yet, I think,” and she is a lovestruck teenage girl again, trying to grasp the ends of her newfound love and knot them together. Lydia’s hand is warm and Allison wraps her hands around it to center her thoughts, to chase the chill from her bones.

“I take it you don’t want a tour, either,” her lips press together, a smile for anyone who wouldn’t know her any better, “you can stay with me until you’re ready, you know.”

Allison wants to say no because she has done enough, she has stranded Lydia enough in this town of spectres and creatures and things outside of even her vast knowledge, but her head tips up and down, and she rises from her seat.

…

Lydia’s car is still the same, though it sports several claw length scratches marked into the bumper, and some of the paint is chipped around the door handles. Allison pulls her legs up against the side of the door and is silent for most of the ride, glancing out of the window in a feeble attempt to keep her eyes off of Lydia.

“How was Las Vegas?”

It is such an innocuous question, but it means so much to Allison, and it is loaded full of answers. Allison uncurls herself from the door and smiles, a cheek pinching smile that lights up all of the contours of her face.

“Hot,” she laughs slightly, shifting in her seat, “but it was a relief. I just really couldn’t stay here, you know?”

Her hands are pale and fastened to her steering wheel, but even Allison can see the white rings of her knuckles. She knows Lydia understands because she hasn’t left—Allison thinks she is the only one who left Beacon Hills, but she just couldn’t _stay_.

“It was an escape route more than anything else,” the words sting like a slap to the cheek, but it is the truth, even if it gives rise to an uncomfortable lurch in the pit of her stomach.

…

“It’s okay if you sleep here, yeah?”

And what she’s asking is if things can be the way they once were, when they were teenage girls who fell asleep propped against each other’s shoulders surrounded by notebooks and printed pages of lore.

Allison slides onto the edge of the bed and nods.

“Of course.”

…

Allison wakes up dripping swear with her nose pressed to Lydia’s. And she really looks like something painted on the pages of an ancient book, a bone-white beauty with hair caught on fire.

Lydia’s lips purse even in her sleep and Allison wipes the tangles of her hair from around her shoulders, sticky with sweat, and just when she wants to nestle back into the sheets, her body jolts beside Lydia and she is struck by the way the moon casts everything in blue.

Blue, like his eyes, like the edges of his lips, like his fingernails biting into her palm, and she slides out of bed as if her vivid nightmare will contaminate Lydia’s unconscious form.

She couldn’t face it the day that she left, crying with armfuls of clothes shoved into a dirty duffle bag and thrown into the back of her car, and she doesn’t think she could face it now. Isaac’s death had been the last straw, one trick too many from the clever fox demon, and it gave her more than enough to continue being haunted, to continue feeling half-dead.

She doesn’t make it to the doorway before Lydia’s voice cuts through the room. “Allison,” it is soft and full of sadness, “Allison, come here.” Lydia is half dressed in a silk gown that hikes around her hips when she catches her around the waist, dragging her to the floor.

Allison doesn’t mean to cry, but she is sticky with sweat and her shorts are bunched in between her thighs and she feels as if she has died along with him, like she died years and years ago the night she swore she would leave this place.

“That’s why you left,” Lydia’s nails drag through the tangles of Allison’s hair, parting the sweaty tangles away from her face, “but he is why we all stayed here.”

It makes her feel weak, for a fleeting moment, because she could not stay.

…

They begin a routine.

In the morning, Allison sorts through the pans in Lydia’s kitchen cabinets, runs her fingers over the immaculate paint and molding around the edges, and sets to work over the electric stove.

She manages to not burn enough pancakes for the two of them, and just when she is about to make an utter mess of an entire package of bacon, Lydia shuffles into the kitchen and sleepily pries the frying pan away.

It is a nasty habit of hers over the next few days. Lydia covers her phone with her hands when she looks to consider moving along, Lydia nudges her away from the storage closet full of books on lycans and supernatural occurrences and towards the bathroom, Lydia braids her hair and does her makeup because that was the only good memory of high school she can think of.

It is even nastier that Allison hardly notices Lydia’s savior complex within those few days.

Because one day she wakes up and shakes Lydia awake with her, frowning. “I think it’s today.” Allison’s lips twitch into a frown and Lydia doesn’t ask, because she doesn’t have to.

Lydia cups Allison’s cheeks and kisses her on her mouth, and she isn’t sure why she does it, but all Allison can think is that she tastes sweet like syrup and warm sugar and it is the best thing she can think of at the moment.

“Fine.” She is not hurt or angry because she knew, she knew this was happening, she knew this was coming. “I’ll be here, you know.”

Allison smiles, and kisses Lydia’s cheek, and somehow, it feels even sweeter.

…

Scott is brand new and still the same as she remembers him being. His smile is still crooked and full of adoration, and he’s still waiting for her. Allison has the distinct feeling that he has been waiting for a long time.

And still his face is rendered in shock at the sight of her, even though Lydia touches makeup to the corners of her face and twists her hair up into a braided bun, and done everything to make her look her best.

“I’m glad you came.” That’s all he says and hold the door open to her, his old house full of so many memories, and she just walks right back into it all, back to Scott.

Allison twists uncomfortably in the doorway for a few moments before she walks in, completely, and Scott looks so different with a narrow face and hair on his jaw and a smile on his face—a _real_ smile.

It doesn’t suit her, but she so desperately wants to stop running, wants to stop facing this guilt that drags at her soul and weighs her down, further than she should be.

“You didn’t have to run,” and he’s holding his arms out at his sides, walking towards her slowly, “it wasn’t your fault, you know.”

But it _was_ , because Isaac wouldn’t have died if it wasn’t for her, if it wasn’t for his stupid feelings and his stupid self-sacrificing nature and it would have been better for him if he’d just hated her instead.

“It was. He’d be here if it wasn’t for me and that’s just the truth, Scott.”

He’s so close that she just wants to fold into his arms and cry for a while, she just wants to stop wandering and say with him, she just wants to do something other than feel like this.

But she stays stone-still, staring at him. “I can’t stay here,” she says, and he just about falls apart.

“But why _not_ , Allison? Staying away isn’t going to make it easier, it’s just going to make you more lonely, and you’ll actually be alone this time!”

“Maybe I don’t _care_ , maybe I want to be alone.” And maybe she’s a liar, too, because her face gives it completely away.

Scott stares at her and she feels only slightly unnerved by it, because he can see through her completely, see through down to her very bones and the tiny fine-winding things that she wants, woven between the spaces of her skeleton. He sounds so young though the weight of the world has given him an air of weariness.

He closes his arms around Allison, pinning her arms to her side and leaning his forehead against her temple. “Stop,” he whispers, and it chills her down deep, “just _stay_.”

And she wants to, she wants to stay here for Lydia and her makeshift breakfasts and her smooth kisses, she wants to stay for Scott because she loves him, even though it has been years, she can’t even count them it has seemed so long.

But she doesn’t.

She stays for Isaac. She stays so she isn’t alone. (And she stays in Scott’s arms, just for a little while longer.)

**Author's Note:**

> i took the lyrics to do you crash and the scallison prompt: scott and allison have drifted apart in their respective ways but then their paths cross (at least 5 years after high school graduation) and they're not sure where to take it from there. i hope you like it! i love throwing lydia into the mix.


End file.
